BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

So Notre Dame joins the Big 10.

 

And CoVID took international students out of play for two cycles of enrollment.That money probably won't be made up.

 

And Cal's band knows enough to stay off the field.

 

A great fight song. "Our banner Gold and Blue, The symbol on it too, Means FIGHT! for California."

Or as the UC Davis band sings it on Picnic Day, "So take your G-ddamn teddy bear and shove it up your golden ass..."

 

I think the inexorable arc of history is marching in that direction.

ND's best alternative to the B1G probably came from about 1990-2005 or so, when they could realistically have tried to cobble together a super-Big East football league with themselves, Penn State and Miami as the kingpins, and names like Pitt, Syracuse, BC and Rutgers (for the vaunted NYC metro market) other possibilities.

But once PSU bolted for the B1G and got settled in, that dream was probably dead. The dream was going nowhere anyway as long as ND remained hell-bent to keep their own independence. Independence is great but if I were ND, being the kingpin of a reasonably viable conference would be pretty attractive too.

If anything that's been the major factor keeping ND out of the B1G over the decades: in the B1G, at best they might be in a power tier with U-M and OSU, and they didn't want to accept that.

If events work out with them ending up in the SEC, they will be in a power tier all by themselves on the bottom. Theyll be slapped around like whipped bitches in internal league politics.

This is where the anti-Catholicism angle comes in; most SEC schools aren't going to take orders/ suggestions/leadership from Notre Dame in anything, ever.

They'll have exactly as much influence as the value of their teevee football contract, and not a nickel more. Forget Bama, Georgia and Texas; ain't none of the rest of them gonna do what the Catholics tell 'em, either.

ND does have a lot of credibility/public regard around the Midwest. Of course they have longstanding rivalries with half the schools, but those rivalries aren't religiously based (at least since the resumption of the ND-Michigan series in the 1970s -- the 30-year hiatus in the series was largely the result of Fielding Yost's personal hell bent anti Catholicism.

 

The geographic fit is horrible for ND in the SEC, but they don't have a Baylor like the B12 does, who fancies itself as the Babtist ND.

 

I think it would be an act of complete idiocy for Notre Dame to join the SEC rather than the Big 10. But given the institutional narcissism of Notre Dame it would not surprise me.

 

Is CBS out of CFB completely now?

 

They will have one of the three games the Big 10 shows. I think Fox has the early game, CBS the late afternoon game and NBC the night game but I am not sure.

 

I've always felt that the thing that makes SEC games so highly viewed is "the rest" of the SEC will watch any SEC game. Out of hate, spite or just curiousity. You don't get that in other conferences to the same degree. As much as people have bemoaned the loss of the Pac-12, their viewership just isn't close to the same level. It is probably a third of the SECs and Big 10's numbers.

 

The Big Ten had this in years past (I’d say through the 1990s) but it’s waning. I honestly think the tailgating/party culture around the big programs has eroded viewership of secondary games. Twenty-five years ago you went to the game or watched the game, went home or flipped the channel to Illinois-Iowa. At least being around Ohio State fans, they’ve for a while now designed their whole day around that one night game in a way that wasn’t prevalent when all the games were on at noon or 3:30. But in ways it’s a throwback to the days when every game started at noon and only one game was available to you, too.

And I think even Big Ten fans have gotten into the habit of flipping to the SEC game. CBS’ marketing of SEC football was exciting. It felt gigantic. Even when it included Ole Miss. The Big Ten failed to keep up with that marketing (and recruiting faster more exciting athletes and playing a more exciting brand of football lagged by 15 years) and I don’t know if they can ever catch up. It’s why I think eventually there has to be a megaconference simply for Ohio State, Michigan, USC, Clemson to get the whiff of “non-SEC” off them in the…nostrils?… of the college football world.